UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

The past that Netanyahu rejects is the one designed after World War II to criminalise behaviours such as the waging of aggressive war, genocide and apartheid. Some of these behaviours had for centuries threatened European Jews. Netanyahu, and those who voted for him, no longer identify with the suffering of their European ancestors. Israel is now a strong, aggressive, land-hungry power much like 19th century Russia and Germany. Many Israeli Jews are also, like Donald Trump’s core supporters, ethnic racists and supremacists.

Netanyahu, who fears indictment on multiple corruption and bribery charges, has chosen to gamble for his political life. He is now in bed with the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, the most heinous hard-right racist party in the country’s recent history.

Otzma Yehudit is made up of vicious racist bigoted disciples of Rabbi Meir Kahane who called for Palestinian genocide and organised terrorist attacks against Palestinian targets. His party was declared a terrorist group by both Israel and the United States. It may have changed its name but not its despicable hate-filled ideology. Today, its ambitions include the resettlement of Palestinians and Arab Israelis throughout the Arab world, an enlargement of Israel’s borders, the barring of Muslims from Haram Al Sharif as well as the criminalisation of romantic relations between Jews and non-Jews.

… with the increasing rise of right-wing and fascist leaders in what is generally considered the West and beyond, these expressions seem to survive with little condemnation, and the fascists even rejoice in their rejection of ‘political correctness’, and in the belief that now one may be more honest about one’s racism and genocidal policies.

This explains very well the bromance between Netanyahu and ultra-nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (who has engaged in Jew-baiting and praise of Nazi collaborators), Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (who compared himself to Hitler), or the newly elected Brasilian President Jair Bolsonaro…

The Israeli prime minister dismissed criticism of Israel as an occupying country as “nonsense”. The comments made in the company of Likud officials on Sunday and reported by Israeli sources puts the Israeli premier at odds with international law and the rest of the world which views Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza as a military occupation.In comments that further reveal Netanyahu’s extreme position, the prime minister said that “empires have conquered and replaced entire populations and no one is talking about it.”

Netanyahu again commended Trump for standing up for Israel during the U.N. General Assembly meeting last week, when the Trump administration announced it would cut all funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Palestine. The agency helps fund schools and clinics in the West Bank and Gaza – as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – for more than 5 million Palestinian refugees.

On top of the sanctions already levelled on Gaza by Israel two weeks ago, which prompted United Nations OCHA to issue yet another emergency warning of death, disease, and “further devastation”, Lieberman continues the ban on fuel and gas into besieged Gaza. Despite the fact that the United Nations continue to avoid using the word ‘genocide’, we continue to follow Israeli escalating policy in Gaza:

Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, issued an order banning the entry of fuel and gas into the besieged Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing from Thursday morning… Although, the Kerem Shalom crossing was recently partially reopened after it had been closed for about a week, Lieberman announced that the reopening would depend on the reduction of launched incendiary objects from Gaza.

…Prior to that, the one-week closure of the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is Gaza’s main commercial crossing, came after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to impose severe economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip.

The current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has come to depend on extremist rabbis and the ultra-orthodox community for his political survival. Without their respective support, he is finished. To that end, it’s Netanyahu’s refusal to condemn those who call for genocide of the Palestinians that makes these radicals all the more normal, and ever more dangerous.

“..he did not deny writing it later – and claimed the moderate rabbis “are clerks, who don’t want to rock the boat, who say ‘this isn’t the halacha [law], precisely,’ […] rabbis, in short, whose bread and water is political correctness […] One wonders whether they will leave the concentrating of ‘Amalekites in death camps to others, or will they rule that the wiping out of ‘Amalek is no longer relevant. Time will tell.”

A Palestinian genocide is on the acceptable menu in Israeli thought. Just make sure you use the correct code-words, right? Don’t embarrass the hasbara people.”

David Cameron has offered the UK’s support to Israel in response to ‘appalling’ attacks carried out by Hamas. “The Prime Minister reiterated the UK’s staunch support for Israel in the face of such attacks, and underlined Israel’s right to defend itself from them.” Netanyahu has warned that Hamas will pay a “heavy price” for the rocket attacks and at least 47 people have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza since yesterday, according to Palestinian officials. Britain admits selling $12 billion in weapons to Israel.